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naujienos intro psyche   participants   Birute Dalia Jonas Nerijus Renata Ula Valentinas Vytautas Zivile Irena   input digest output Karolis BWORK RAM6 reikalaujame gražinti balsas kontaktai partneriai

2004-05-09 Irena : input source_1 Stories and Fairy-tales vo. 4, Lithuanian Folklore, Vilnius, Mintis 1967 Chapter “Wandering Lakes”, pages 605 and 606 source_2 People of the forest http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=HEMIIJKFIPCN?id=ns24491 source_3 A conversation between a mother and a daughter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- source_1 Stories and Fairy-tales vo. 4, Lithuanian Folklore, Vilnius, Mintis 1967 Chapter “Wandering Lakes”, pages 605 and 606 Bitinelis Lake Once upon the time, it was long time ago, there was a cordial thread over Siauliai. It happened that there came a huge cloud full of water and people were terrified that it may whelm the town, at that time still small one. One of the dwellers got a dream telling that the hanging over in the air cloud would become inoffensive when the mane of this cloud would be unriddled. And the people started guessing. But nobody succeeded. As this cloud was producing peculiar sounds, buzzing like a bee, one woman said: -So what will happen if this cloud just buzzes and buzzes like a bee! The moment she said this, the cloud descended blandly nearby the town and still is there, wearing the name of a bee - Bitinelis*. * Bitinelis name derives from the word ‘bite’ (a bee eng) and has a significance a male bee. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- source_2 People of the forest http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=HEMIIJKFIPCN?id=ns24491 Conrad Feather is only part way through his PhD but has already spent several years living with indigenous people in the Amazon, helping them drive loggers from their ancestral land. Recently he trained them to use GPS devices so that they could create the first map of their territory and make an ambitious bid to win legal title to it. This month the project won him the prestigious St Andrews Prize for the Environment. He talks to Alun Anderson about his life with the Nahua. How did you end up aged 21 living in the remotest part of the Amazon? I was studying anthropology at Cambridge. One rainy day I was in a bookshop and came on a poem about Manu national park in Peru and how it "throbbed with wildlife". The phrase captivated me. What can a place be like that throbs with life? I had to go. You don't exactly look like an explorer... I did once have an enormous beard. No, to tell the truth I've always been a terrible traveller. I was always the one who got sick on the ferry on family holidays. But it didn't stop me, so I must have an adventurous spirit. The poem may have inspired you, but most people wouldn't go further... I started researching the area and found two American anthropologists who had worked with the Nahua in the lands bordering the western side of Manu national park. They said it would be really useful to go and find out about the threats from loggers. With help from the student-run expedition society I found four other Cambridge students - three girls and one guy - willing to go. Then I set out on my own on a reconnaissance trip to ask the Nahua whether they would let us come and live among them. That was April 2000. It was a crazy trip. I did not speak Spanish, let alone Nahua. All I had was the first name of one contact who might be living in the small logging town of Sepahua. Eventually I found Federico and he agreed to help. From there we travelled for four days in a dugout canoe, up the Urubamba river and then to the headwaters of the Mishagua, where the Nahua live. The Nahua are a very small people. Just 250 of them survive today. Until the 1980s they resisted all attempts at contact from the outside world. They fought against loggers coming into their territory, and both Nahua and loggers were killed. Then when contact was made, epidemics ravaged the population and hundreds died. The survivors have all moved into the one village of Serjali. We knew that logging was continuing to be a big problem. What did the Nahua make of you? I was very ignorant and could not really explain my project well, but they are very affectionate even with people they don't really know. The important thing was that they understood I wanted to come back with four friends and stay there for three months. They held a communal meeting and they said: yes, you can come back along with Federico, who could speak both Nahua and Spanish. I was very happy and went back to let the others know. Our first three months were fantastic. We worked incredibly hard conducting interviews with different people, trying to understand the community and its concerns. At the end of our stay we held a big meeting. The whole village came along. We borrowed a gigantic pot and made an English rice pudding. We explained everything that we had learned from them and they asked questions and corrected things. Then we ate the rice pudding, which I served with a canoe paddle. Afterwards we explained the things we had learned in Lima on our way to the village. We had learned about the political and legal status of the area where the Nahua lived, and that it is a designated reserve where loggers should not come. They didn't know these things? No, they didn't know any of these things. Could you promise them anything? No, but we explained to them that we were going to write a report and give it to the government so that the government would know about them and their problems. And everything we knew we recorded in Spanish as a report in their "book of acts" - an official book that records important meetings within the community. We wrote out the entire law of their reserve that we had brought from Lima. Although we didn't know at the time, that turned out to be of great importance. I went back to finish my degree, but unfortunately that following summer there was an invasion of more than 250 loggers. The Nahua set out on an epic journey to get help. They could not go to Sepahua, the nearest town, because all the loggers lived there, so they had to build a raft and head across the watershed to Manu national park and to a town on the other side. It was a two-week journey. No one who went spoke Spanish, but they carried their community book with them everywhere. They showed it to park officials, biologists and members of the indigenous federation they met. Everyone could read it and see, "Oh yes, they live in a reserve, it is illegal to log there." The Nahua were able to get letters written on their behalf that copied out word for word the report that we had written in their book. So even while we were away the project was already having an impact. It was at this point that I returned and found out about the invasion. Except for short trips home I stayed for almost three years, gradually learning both Spanish and Nahua. How did you help with the immediate problems of the logger invasion? I spent about three months in the community and then travelled with the Nahua to Lima to protest. I went back and forth to the jungle just trying to keep ahead of the logging situation. Every day I was in the government offices hassling them; they got totally sick of me. But they finally established temporary guard posts at the entrance to the Nahua area, and got rid of the illegal loggers. That was almost a year after the loggers invaded. Was that a permanent solution? No. The guard posts were soon withdrawn. The Nahua told me they wanted to have more security from loggers and wanted a land title. So, along with one of my friends, we explained that in Peru the biggest land title an indigenous community has ever been awarded is about a tenth of the size of the Nahua's territory, which at 2000 square kilometres is very big. But we advised them that if they made a proper map of their land, then they would have a chance of gaining a title for the entire area. So we trained the Nahua how to use GPS devices and how to make a map. First we had to explain what a map is and why it is important. We explained that it is like a language that the government uses to know where everything is. For example, if you want to tell the government there are loggers coming up the river that the Nahua call "The River where Lots of People have Died" the government will just say "Where is that?" You must give them a number because the government thinks only in terms of numbers. Every place has a number and you can get this number by this machine, the GPS, that communicates with the stars. They got it straight away. We spent over a year collecting information and putting it into a computer. It is a cultural map. It explains where they go hunting and fishing, where they collect important plants and fruit, where they have had villages in the past and where people have died and are buried. It contains almost everything that is important to them. The objective is to show that this isn't empty space. It looks like virgin rainforest to our eyes, but for the Nahua every rock and tree has meaning and the map is the easiest way of expressing that. Why do they need so much space? To maintain a subsistence way of life they do need a very large area of land. Also, the epidemics nearly wiped them out, but the population is growing rapidly now. They used to live in three villages several days' journey apart, and I think they will soon start to split up again. If you look at all the other indigenous communities, the titles they've won have been miserly. This has meant that they have no sustainable resource base. They can't live the way they used to. Without secure land tenure the Nahua won't have the opportunity of making decisions about their future. And without secure land tenure there is no hope of conserving the rainforest. What kind of incentive do they have for conserving something that they may not have in 10 years' time? If you give people inalienable rights over land then they have an incentive to think about their future. Acquiring such land titles is a fundamental step. The Nahua's lands are particularly important because the two rivers passing through them provide the only access route into Manu national park from the west. If the Nahua are effective guardians then loggers cannot get into Manu. There is no road. The rivers are the only way in. We can already see the map working. On the river banks going into the Nahua land we worked with the Nahua to erect giant signs incorporating the map and announcing that this was "El territorio del pueblo Nahua". We put them up last summer. Some of the loggers laughed, but it is hard to deny the importance of something so big and so official-looking. Some loggers turn back at the signs. Some small groups have gone all the way up to Serjali. But helped by the signposts the Nahua feel confident enough to say, "No, go away". They are able to do this as long as there isn't another mass invasion. Many of the loggers are reasonable people who trade with the Nahua. Only a few are cowboys. How will winning the St Andrews Prize for the Environment help? It will enable me to extend the mapping work already done with the Nahua. I would like to donate a laptop with a solar panel so they can transfer the information from the GPS themselves and go on adding details to the map. They have already learned to use a digital camera and we have discussed the idea of them taking photos if loggers invade again. Then they could travel down to Sepahua and email the photos to the forestry authorities. The loggers used to be blasé about the government not doing anything, but when we got it to take action in 2001 they were totally shocked. They are now aware that the government can act if they are caught logging illegally. You'll stick with this? My personal ambition is to see the Nahua through to their land title. The procedure is now under way but still needs constant political pressure on the government. In 2002 we set up an NGO called Shinai Serjali to continue to help the Nahua and other peoples like them. But the objective of our organisation is to become redundant. Perhaps three to five years will be enough. Three of my friends who originally came out to Serjali - Gregor MacLennan, Dora Napolitano and Aliya Ryan - are still involved. They are out in Peru right now and working with other communities too. Personally I am committed to the Nahua because I went through the traumatic logging invasion with them. What are the Nahua like? They hug one another a lot and are very emotional. They love to tell stories and laugh. If there is even a small illness they go completely over the top about how they are going to die, and then when they recover everyone talks about how they nearly died. They have a strong taboo on confrontations. I have never seen an argument in the village. It is a land without fridges so there is no storing of food. If you can catch a big animal like a tapir you cannot eat all of it immediately so you have to give most of it away. That means everybody shares. It is hard to conceive of their way of thinking. They live in an abundant, giving environment where they can hunt and fish without worrying about resources being exhausted. There is no shortage or scarcity. When they encounter a world of money and scarcity it is totally antithetical to the way they think. Keywords: Resistance; fragility and purity; wildness and the technology; community and collective mentality; implication and explication: loggers and indigenous people; community and the environment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- source_3 A conversation between a mother and a daughter Irena born 1951 Siauliai region, Paviekiai village Irena born 1979 Siauliai Time: late evening of the mother's day after visiting Kurtuvenai, a small town in Siauliai region, seeing the old cemetery of the forefathers' tombs. While there viewing the carved inscriptions: the names, dates, pictures and the stylistics of past times the end of nineteen the and the first part of the twentieth century. Place: at home The first layer and the first step back ~25 years ..... Daughter: ... what you had in these times, what was the approach about the Lithuanians wedding with the other nationality person? If to compare what we have today and then how different were the stand from the family, the community, peers and the environment? Mother: well, there were marriages but rather few. It was considered to wed with a Lithuanian. Yes there were Lithuanian girls going out with Russians... When I was in the high school there were public discos were the Russian military had their culture house, so to say. Now this building is Siauliai county court, the one in the centre. D: oh, really… M: so going to dance there at ... was considered a bad form... those kind of hopeless girls used to go there for their last chance… We, my friends didn’t go there. There were other places for dancing. D: hmm, what were the reasons then? M: it was thought that the Russian and not only Russian military men used to come here from the very distant places, nooks of the Soviet Union. They stayed there temporally and then they were appointed to the other places after a while… D: they used to come here form somewhere, temporally and then they would disappear… M: there were affairs but mainly for some time until they were appointed to somewhere else… D: but still there were marriages, weren't they? It wasn't only for short, passing relationships they used to meet… M: well, there were marriages but very few, I must say. Some soldier would fall in love and stayed then or the couple would leave to Russia. One of my friends, you know her, she has married to a Russian and they still live get along well. D: you see, but I can't understand the resistance of the people. The nationality doesn't state that a person is fair or unfair. Why you were reluctant? M: you see, they used to live in the isolated territories, some military zones, half classified communities. And I remember the youth used to keep a distance from the military. D: still there are Russians living in Šiauliai and not only Russians so you should deal with the other nationality people and nowadays too. M: yes, and I agree that Slavic people are of a kind nature they are open, talkative, friendly, and you remember, we were in Kaliningrad district few years ago. D: yes, I do. The picture was gloomy...If to judge from the heritage, from the abandonment of the former Prussian culture, the haunting buildings, the fragments...You can only guess what was there what they had still living there... M: right, there are big differences. Lithuanians are planning their being, their everyday lives; they think what should be done, what should be changed for better. D: I think there is that sense of belonging to the land and appreciation of the land that is so significant to the Lithuanians. M: while Russians, if to take those living in Šiauliai or in Kaliningrad district, live at this moment. They have celebrations, waste money on temporal things. They don’t think about the next day… The second layer further ~50 years ago M: my mother, the grandmother, used to tell people fled from Russia passing our village. Some were asking for food. And just as they had got it they ate it not leaving anything for next time. This is the way they understand, they do not care about the future... And this could be noticed nowadays as well. D: this is sad ... I guess this is because of the war and then post war situation, when any day you can loose everything… In Vilnius there are these careless looking people… M: and in the small towns and in Latvia for example there are people that have come to live there because they were brought from the demolished towns and swept away villages. They were collected and taken to the places that were desolated: people had left or they were expatriated... And in the post war times there used to flee sporadic individuals begging for food for shelter… D: [they had lost everything! they just were roving... without any destination?] M: it was like this - the distribution of the people - some parts were vacated, some colonized and populated. D: [If the lives can be ever distributed. Madness] But those people who were fleeing from village to village did they cause troubles, did they commit crimes? M: no, they used to keep aside. When the Russians occupied they use to keep hard order and the extreme cases were rather rare. Plunders and cruelties appeared later what the special military troops started fighting against the guerrillas hiding in the woods. The village people were suspected to be giving aid to the guerrillas and then the raids were from time to time… But I have heard about this, I don’t remember that much. D: but I don't understand how people managed to resist and to recover from the war madnesses, all the losses and kept living on the debris. M: it was hard… and then the collective farms were being established by force. D: one more burden… M: the part of the livestock, agricultural implements, land were taken to the collective farms and only few items were left considering the amount of the family members. D: absurdity - people had had hardly any property after the war. What cattle could be brought then? M: people used to preserve and take the cattle to the temporal shelter whenever the Front line was approaching. And when the cattle were in these farms people still used to work with their [former] own horses. And I remember we used to go to the owner to ask for the horse though it was kept in the collective farm. D: unbelievable. Then the cattle were groomed by the former owners! M: that time people didn't earn much, the poverty and destitution was common... then the cattle died ... then the drinking had begun…before people hadn't had this habit…People were hardworking, upstanding D: this is it… ….